


Understanding

by GunBunnyCentral



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GunBunnyCentral/pseuds/GunBunnyCentral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeryn doesn't understand. Crichton does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the first third of Season Two, post-The Way We Weren't, but no real spoilers…

She doesn't understand - *never* understands, actually, and doesn't think she ever will - but Crichton…

Crichton understands it all, even when it doesn't seem like it.

Kindness, compassion, trust, faith. Love… These things are as natural to him as breathing, and seem to just flow out of him effortlessly. It's all hard for her still - so damn hard it scares her and she thinks maybe she's just doomed to being broken - but then he'll look at her and flash her that grin, and she knows she's learning, that she got it right this time.

She'd thought of John as soft and weak at first - looked at him like he was crazy when he persisted in trying to be what he called 'a good man' despite the hardness of their life on Moya - but she doesn't think so anymore.

If anything, she remembers his arms wrapped around her as she cried herself through many long nights, remembers how comforted she felt even as she tried to push him away, and finds herself wondering if the things he knows about simply living as a whole, happy person might be more valuable in the end than her lifetime of combat training.

No matter how far she's come, though - and she *knows* she's grown and changed so much over the last cycle - there are still things she can't say and won't do.

Her pride still won't let her tell him outright how much his faith and his friendship mean to her, or how much she's come to care for him - the words she'd need are so foreign she'd only embarrass herself, and part of her still insists that it's wrong to care so much for any one man.

So, instead, they maintain an uneasy but companionable distance between them, filled with all the things she's so scared to admit to, and Crichton hovers just as close as she'll let him while the banked heat between them grows and grows.

If it were anyone but John, she'd have taken him to bed long ago, just to clear her head and keep herself believing her interest was just casual and transitory.

Now, though, she's come to see how empty those past experiences were and that she wants something different with John. She wants everything she somehow senses they could have together.

But not until she's finally free of the years of brainwashing - free to accept everything John is offering her with the understanding and gratitude it deserves, and whole enough again to return every bit of it herself. John deserves no less.

In the meantime, though, she works quietly toward that day, chipping away oh-so-slowly at the walls she built up around herself and feeling happier and healthier with every microt she does so.

It's terrifying and wonderful and frustrating and so many other things, all at once, but every time John smiles at her or touches her it becomes just that much easier to push ahead.

In the end, she knows, John will be there waiting - and she will make the wait worth every arn…


End file.
